


Lómion

by kalypsobean



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:10:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Aearwen as part of Sultry in September 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeärwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ae%C3%A4rwen/gifts).



I.

Maeglin remembers looking into a deep valley from above the clouds. Trees rose from undefined mountaintops, as if they had reached the sky and found new life in a whole new forest.

He wanted to climb one and see what the stars looked like, but his mother told him to hurry.

 

His arms were bloodied by the time someone found them, wandering as they were along a path seldom used and barely visible; he had been sure they were following animal tracks or that his mother had finally taken all she could and clung to a dream she was trying to act out with him along, only to witness her fall. She looked behind her far more than she looked ahead and moved at a pace he could barely manage, until she slept and he watched the shadows pass over her face, unfamiliar, as moonlight struggled to reach them. When he saw light that would not be dimmed and he screamed; his mother shushed him and began to cry.

The path became clearer after that, but his mother still looked behind, and he wished he'd run away on his own.

 

He thought at first that they had come to an impassable thicket, grown unnaturally entwined yet natural and terrifying, and he dreaded the walk back down, but the trees thinned as they grew closer and his mother cried out and ran forward, letting go of his hand and leaving him behind.

He felt magic under his skin as he touched the trees, and it kindled inside him; its song echoed long after he had passed through stone and marble and come within the final walls. He did not forget that first sense of undiminished power, though it failed to respond to him the way he could draw shapes out of iron and give them life with nothing but his dreams and his hands.

 

He remembers only vaguely how his mother fell as he knew she finally would, pulling his father down with her and leaving him alone amid strangers and strangled by the constant humming in the air and constant ethereal glow that left no real shadows in its wake. He knows he didn't cry, though he would not have been shamed for doing so, and that her marker is the most beautiful thing he has wrought; it is his least favourite and he is grateful that it is hidden away from him in his brightest times. 

 

He wishes now, even as he reaches out and asks the earth where he needs to go, that he was never cursed so, that his mother had never given him the gift of being able to walk untouched under the light and be within reach of things he cannot have. He remembers hiding behind the table in their small house and his father holding out a ring still hot from the fire, the smell of stew prepared so easily with plants he tended himself, and the feel of rough cloth on his skin as he played.

He remembers being blind and every day that the flames smoulder around him he wishes that he had never been able to see.


	2. Chapter 2

II. 

He dreams of falling now, every night and every day when he seeks solace from the darkness that seems to creep around the edge of every wall and hide in the hollow of every tree. The light seems brighter now, more unbearable, and he holds the key to everything in his hands, a symbol of how easy it is to unmake the things that have been wrought upon him through no will he could truly call his own.

 

Only the elements speak to him now; the earth is finally, deafeningly, silent and sometimes, for no reason, he will close his eyes and listen for it. He feels more solid, more alive somehow, as if fire runs through him and he wields it to create armour and weapons which breathe and flash as he brings them forth and learns their secret names.

 

The time is near; he knows this because he spends days on end inside, away from his forge, listening to voices that flow around him tinged with disgust and righteous anger he doubts their claim to feel. He tells them to stay; the walls have held, will always hold, and those who run from the darkness will only fall the way his mother did when it sought her out here in these so hallowed walls. 

They listen because they trust him, because they do not know how to distrust, and he pities them; sheltered and removed, they know nothing despite their inherited wisdom. He arms them anyway, because he has nothing to do with the time he spends away from them, has no family and those he would claim burn with light and repel him. He casts a ring for her and wears it on a chain around his neck so that his heart warms it for the time he will take her away to a place where there is only twilight and shadow and they can count the stars.

 

His mother told him once that their fate was woven in a place beyond the stars and sometimes those who were blessed would know their future from dreams sent by the Valar.   
His mother told him a lot of things he listened to but never believed.

 

~*~

 

He is on the walls, the only place now where the shadows are pure. Below there is fire, blue at its heart and tinged with black at the edge; it casts the city in an unevenly red glow that taints even her face as she turns from him and he lets her go, listens to the silence and blocks the sword that cuts it with a bloodthirsty song.   
He remembers his father's face when he steps back and feels air where the stone has betrayed him in turn.

 

~*~

 

He doesn't remember falling, only that he wakes and is unable to see.


End file.
